Other Friends
by darlingDystopia
Summary: My The Underland Chronicles Fiction Exchange 2013 piece. My prompt: "Set about eleven years in the future (assuming that Gregor's family stayed in New York and in contact w/ the Underland); Hazard and Boots, now ages 18 and 14, goofing around with their bat bonds, possibly also with Lizzie at age 18/19. Hints of Hazard/Lizzie."


**Hello everyone and welcome to my The Underland Chronicles Fiction Exchange 2013 piece! My writing prompt was: "Set about eleven years in the future (assuming that Gregor's family stayed in New York and in contact w/ the Underland); Hazard and Boots, now ages 18 and 14, goofing around with their bat bonds, possibly also with Lizzie at age 18/19. Gregor/Luxa, but they don't have to show up. Hints of Hazard/Boots or Hazard/Lizzie; take your pick."**

**Enjoy! #TUCFicExchange**

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Maggie had pressed her forehead against the bus window for so long, she felt like her brow would be completely flattened by the time she got home.

The bus bumped along the torn-up road, making Maggie's teeth clack together and her head thump into the glass harder. She had her headphones on over her curly brown hair, and she was only vaguely aware of her new friends from camp chatting spiritedly around her.

As much as her friends probably would've liked her to, Maggie didn't feel like joining the conversation. She was pretending to be tired, when in reality she was ecstatic; she wanted to stand up and sing to the whole bus about how excited she was, but obviously she couldn't do that.

Her frenzy would have to remain a secret for just a little while longer.

A girl sitting next to Maggie—one of the ones who she'd hung out with frequently over the past two weeks of summer camp—tapped on her shoulder.

Maggie paused her music and took off her headphones.

"We were just talking about what we're going to be doing for the rest of the summer," the girl said, gesturing to the other teenagers gathered around their seat. "What are your plans for the rest of the month? If you're free, we should all hang out together sometime."

Maggie shook her head. "I'm taking a trip to visit some family friends in, er, Canada. I won't be back in the country until school starts again," she answered, feeling only the slightest bit guilty about sort of lying about her summer plans. "Sorry."

Camp was always great, of course; it was a good place to make friends, a nice way to spend your summer, etcetera. But that was only true providing that you didn't have somewhere better to be when it was eighty degrees or more in the shade in a crowded, cramped New York City.

Maggie loved her new friends that she'd made at camp, she really did, but they weren't much compared to her _other_ friends.

She grinned at the thought of them as the bus driver announced they'd be making their first stop in about five minutes. She could barely contain herself.

It'd been _months_ since she'd been in the Underland. _Months!_ But that was better than could be said for her sister, Lizzie, who'd just come home from college for the summer and hadn't been underground in about a year.

Lizzie was only eighteen, but skipping two grades of school will do that to you. She's the genius of the family, taking after their dad, who teaches science. Gregor—Maggie's twenty-four-year-old brother who studies geology in California, and rarely gets time to visit—got the real bad luck. For him, the only way to keep in touch with the Underland is through a series of complicated back-and-forth mail services that Maggie is secretly offering to any of Gregor's many Underland friends—the queen Luxa, in particular—to get messages to him, and vice versa.

Their mom had kept a very, _very_ short leash on Lizzie and more specifically Maggie about the Underland. No going down there without telling anyone. Only on non-school days, mostly during winter and summer break. No canceling or declining plans with above-ground friends to be with Underland friends.

"The Overland always comes first," their mom had told them.

Maggie had thought that Lizzie was lucky when she finally got to go off to college and do whatever she wanted with her life, but Lizzie had disagreed with her, saying, "You get to visit them every winter and summer, I have to wait until I'm not up to my neck in school work _and_ when I don't have school for more than a couple weeks."

As a result, Lizzie had also fallen victim to Maggie's—ahem—_underground_ business of systematically leaving notes for her sister in the grate in their laundry room for the Underlanders. If their mom ever found out, she'd probably bolt up the grate for good.

Maggie's bus screeched to a stop next to the curb about a street or two away from her apartment. She stood up, hefted her backpack on her shoulder, said goodbye to her friends, and practically flew off the bus, bounding up the extra two blocks to her apartment complex.

At fourteen years of age, that would be the last year that Maggie would be able to go to camp, but that didn't matter to her. All it meant was more time to spend in the Underland, where she really wanted to be.

Waiting for the elevator was torture. It seemed to be taking forever, so Maggie decided to take the steps instead.

Six flights of stairs and what Maggie thought to be no less than a gazillion steps later, she found herself at the door to her apartment. It was unlocked, so she stepped right in and dumped her backpack on the floor with a thud. The apartment was dry and dusty and the walls were cracked where they connected to the floor, but it was home. Her dad and sister were there; she hugged both of them.

Lizzie had stringy dark hair, and was skinny and short compared to Maggie, who was a whole four years younger than her but still broader and taller than her. Lizzie had previously been curled up in the armchair, twisting her hands around her fingers.

"You ready!?" Maggie shouted, immediately pumped and ready for anything.

"Oh jeez," Lizzie muttered, biting her thumb.

"Calm down, Liz," Maggie said. "Aren't you happy to finally be getting down there again?"

"Just nervous," Lizzie mumbled, getting up and pacing around the room anxiously. "I haven't seen Hazard all year. Or Luxa, or Ripred, or—"

"Aren't you, like, an adult now? You're supposed to be the rational one."

"Margaret, stop making fun of your sister," their dad broke in.

"Just be cool," Maggie told Lizzie, ignoring her dad. "They'll be glad to see you. I'm sure of it. It's not like they'd forget you or anything."

"Well, yeah. I know that." Lizzie didn't look _entirely_ sure.

Suddenly the door opened and their mom trudged in, sweating from the summer heat, just getting home from work.

"Oh, you're already back," she said, looking at Maggie. "I was thinking about making a meal for us to have before you two leave for—"

"Mom, I've been waiting _two weeks_ at camp for this! Lizzie's been waiting a whole year!"

She set down her bag and sighed. "Okay then," she submitted. "You girls ready?"

"Hell yeah!" Maggie shouted, swinging her backpack onto her shoulders again. She'd secretly packed double what she needed for camp so that she could get to the Underland right away when she got home.

"Margaret," her mom snapped.

"Sorry. I meant, _heck_ yeah!"

"Better." She nodded approvingly. "How about you, Liz?"

They all looked at Lizzie. _She wouldn't dare back down now, right?_ Maggie thought.

She kind of just stood there for a second in silence, and then smiled and said, "As Boots says: heck yeah."

...

When they got to the basement, Maggie barely even waited for her dad's "okay, all clear" before bolting towards the dryer on the far wall and struggling to push it to the left far enough to make way for the grate serving as their door to the Underland to open.

"Maggie," her mom called after her, nervously. "Aren't you going to make sure someone's there to catch you?"

"Nope!" she shouted back in answer, launching herself through the hole and into thin air.

Maggie spread out her arms and legs to their full extent. She couldn't quite remember when she'd come down to the Underland for the first time, but she knew that this part of falling in particular she'd thought was a slide. Or maybe that had just been something her brother had told her.

For a minute or two, she was weightless. Then she slammed into something big and soft. She ran her hands through the silky fur and up close, she could see the black coat, speckled with white spots like stars.

"Hey, Nyx," Maggie spoke to the gigantic bat.

"Greetings, Maggie," she purred back to her.

"It's been a while, huh?" Maggie asked.

"Indeed, it has. How are you?"

"I'm great, now that I'm back in the Underland."

"Then I am not so reluctant to admit that I am extremely happy that you are back, as well."

"Did you miss me?" Maggie smirked, patting her friend again.

"It has been... uneventful... without you," Nyx answered, and Maggie could hear the bat chuckle a little.

Somewhere above them, a thud echoed in the tunnel that signaled that Lizzie's bat had found her, too.

"How's it going, Daedalus?" Maggie called up to where her sister was.

"It is going well, Maggie," Daedalus—Lizzie's favored, creamy-coated bat—answered her.

Maggie looked up and into the gray, smoky mist that surrounded them. "I know you're up there somewhere, Hazard! Don't try and scare us."

Suddenly, a body dropped out of the air and onto Nyx's back next to Maggie. "Well, it was worth a try," he said, laughing, before rolling right off the side of the bat.

Maggie grinned. A shadow passed next to her and Nyx, and she could only suspect that it was Hazard on his bond.

"Hazard, is that you?" Lizzie called. "And Aether, too?"

"It's good to finally hear your voice again, Lizzie," Hazard answered her. "And, yes, Aether is here, too."

"It's really nice to see you, too."

They'd reached the bottom of the windy shaft and were now flying through the tunnels outside Regalia.

"Have you been getting my letters, Lizzie?" Hazard asked.

Maggie could hear Lizzie's scowl in her voice when she said, "Yes, and my sister's been charging me a fortune for it."

"Hey," Maggie exclaimed. "Don't complain. At least I give you the family discount."

"Boots, you _only_ deliver messages for your family."

Nyx and Aether burst out laughing. Maggie couldn't help but join in and say, "You got that right!"

Without warning, Nyx tucked in her wings are rolled sideways. Maggie slipped off the side of her friend and started falling through empty space. Her insides felt like they had stayed suspended in the air while the rest of Maggie freefell, but she only laughed for the whole five seconds down before Nyx caught her again.

The next second, they ducked through the exit to the tunnel they'd been flying through and the faces of Maggie's Underland friends were suddenly illuminated with the torchlight from the gigantic arena they now circled. Below them, alabaster-skinned, silvery-haired humans practiced sword fighting and acrobatics. They started pointing and shouting gleefully up at Maggie and Lizzie. Maggie waved back in greeting, but when she looked to see if Lizzie was paying attention, she saw that her sister was just sitting on her bat, flying in lazy circles, glancing at Hazard every so often.

Hazard is a Halflander. He has the same white skin as the Underlanders, but he has curly black hair, and bright green eyes. _He must be about the same age as Lizzie now, _Maggie thought.

Maggie took pictures of him and some other Underlanders at her brother's request last time she was visiting, and sent them to Gregor. He replied, saying that Hazard had really gotten taller since he'd last seen him, when Gregor was eighteen, and Hazard was twelve. Gregor had also told Maggie to tell Luxa that she was beautiful, and really starting to look like a queen, and Maggie decided to charge her brother extra for that.

Hazard's bond, Aether, with wide brown wings and black spots, flew in waves, up and down in the hair until Hazard's face was about as green as his eyes.

Lizzie was smiling at the ludicrous scene. "Hazard," she said. "Did you know that you can rearrange the letters in 'Hazard and Aether' to get 'darn her data haze'?"

Hazard beamed, like he'd just been bestowed with a great privilege to get his and his bond's name anagrammed by Lizzie, even though Maggie has heard her go on and on about them in her letters. Near daze hardhat, narrate had hazed, a hazard heart end... the list about Hazard went on and on.

Maggie leaned forward and told her bat something quietly. Nyx flapped her wings harder to get level with Aether.

Maggie turned to Hazard and started clicking in crawler language, something he and a cockroach had taught her when she was younger, and had never really forgotten.

"Hazard, I think my sister likes you," she clicked to him.

His eyes stared straight ahead, but his pale Underlander skin blushed pink. "Well," he answered in equally accurate cockroach speak. "As long as we keep this conversation in crawler, I am not too embarrassed to say I think I like her too."

Maggie giggled as Daedalus brought Lizzie down to fly on the other side of Hazard. "What are you two talking about?" she asked, curiously.

"It is nothing," Hazard said quickly, ears turning more red.

Margaret sat back on her bat from laughing so hard while Lizzie kept pestering them both about what they had been talking about in crawler. _This is going to be an awesome summer vacation,_ she thought to herself.

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**I've always had this headcanon that Boots grew up into a total badass and had an equally badass bat to match, also she's clever and kind of a little trickster. She was fun to write in this. Tell me what you think about the two new bats, by the way!**

**Reviews would be inspirative! I reply to every one of them!**

**~Divide /0**

**PS: Sorry to all of you who were expecting my PJO fic!**


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